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10 Cheshvan 5763 - October 16, 2002 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE

Boys Will Be Boys
by R' Zvi Zobin

Results are now coming in from the American education system which indicate that it is not good to have boys and girls in the same class.

Experts are now realizing that boys and girls have different learning styles and classroom needs. As a result, more boys are failing and being sent for special education classes.

"Boys receive between five and ten times more disciplinary actions in elementary and middle school than girls do," William S. Pollack, an assistant clinical professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University's medical school, said in a recent interview. "And mostly, we're told that it is because they are more difficult. My answer is: it's because the environment is more difficult for them to attune to."

A report called "Entering Kindergarten: A Portrait of American Children When They Begin School" released a year ago by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, says that regarding reading skills, boys soon begin to fall behind girls. Girls and boys have similar skills overall when they enter kindergarten, but girls are slightly ahead in reading. According to the report, more boys experience developmental delays, and "girls are more pro-social and less prone to problem behaviors."

The NCES also recently reported in the Digest of Education Statistics in January, 2001, that girls are more able to stay on task, better able to pay attention and more eager to learn when they enter kindergarten. But a study released in the fall of 1999 by the University of Chicago says that by age four-and- a-half, boys have a better understanding of spatial relationships than girls do.

A study published last February in the journal Education and Treatment of Children says that nearly two-thirds of the students receiving special education services in the United States are boys.

To study some of the factors that contribute to placement in special education, researchers reviewed the records of 695 students with mental retardation and specific learning disabilities from three midsize districts for three school years, from 1992 to 1995. All of the students were at least six years old and were new to special education.

The researchers gathered data about gender, reasons for referral, and the grades of the students when they were referred to special education, and asked classroom teachers about the students' behavior, coordination and academic skills.

Only 2.5 percent of the girls had been referred to special education because of behavior problems, but 20 percent of the boys had been referred for that reason. "Boys are more likely to be referred by regular education teachers, presumably because they are more disruptive and difficult to manage," the study says. The researchers concluded that fewer girls are referred to special education because girls typically do not misbehave in classrooms the same way boys do.

However, when boys and girls are separated and given their own classrooms, performance and achievements improved and the boys exhibited fewer problems. Kathryn Herr, an associate professor of education at the University of New Mexico, spent the 1999-2000 school year studying 1,100 students -- boys and girls -- who were being educated in separated classrooms. She found that both boys and girls performed better and felt more comfortable in their non-coed environments.

One lesson we can derive from these comments is that we need to customize our approach to children and be aware of whether we are dealing with boys or girls. The results of the research will not be surprising to any parent of a large family. From the very earliest days, we can often see the differences in behavior between boys and girls.

However, often, in the education system, the standards of behavior of girls is taken as the norm.

Researchers report that "According to the report, more boys experience developmental delays" and that "Girls are more pro- social and less prone to problem behaviors." This means that they are setting the girls' achievements as the standard and judging boys as compared to girls. However, if we give boys their own standards, then the results will be different.

Boys are boys. They have a different rate of development to that of girls. For example, by nature, they are more physical in their play, have a shorter attention span and pay less attention to detail. Boys tend to be more aggressive in their attitude to their learning and enjoy arguments and throwing out ideas. Typically, a boy's handwriting is less neat than that of a girl.

This means that a boy might be labeled as ADD or ADHD or dysgraphic according to the standards of a girl, but he might be within the norm for a boy.

So, a well-organized girls' school might fit in with our ideas of what a school should be like. But when we walk into a cheider or a yeshiva, we should not be surprised if it seems to be noisy and the lessons less structured.

Boys have different needs than girls and we need to relate to them.

 

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